Over the last 6 years, I have deliberately put myself in "no retreat" situations.

I have moved to a new city, I have set a hard deadline, or signed up to do something out of my comfort zone. Whenever I'm becoming a big fish in a small pond with my personal development, I jump into a bigger pond – even if I'm not ready.

I've done this so often, in fact, that I developed a process that helps me achieve the "unrealistic" goals necessary to make it in the "bigger pond."

Right now, I have yet another unrealistic goal. So here is how I planned to achieve it:

"Have I told you that story about how Charlie Parker became Charlie Parker? Parker's a young kid, pretty good on the sax. Gets up to play at a cutting session… and he (screws) it up...and he's laughed off-stage. Cries himself to sleep that night...

Another morning… another day where feel like I can do nothing but stare blankly at the computer screen.

It’s time for me to continue working on the manuscript that has been the culmination of years of research, and that I raised over $13,000 to complete. But the bills keep piling up, and the publishing process is longer and more expensive than I thought it would be.

That’s what Joe De Sena and his three teammates were looking at as they approached the starting line of the 2001 International Raid Ukatak. The Raid Ukatak is an adventure race held in Quebec, Canada, in the middle of the winter.

Joe’s team was ready and willing to endure torture. This was Joe’s first real test of his willpower.

It was a simple a train ride from Manchester to London to most of the passengers on the train, but for one passenger, it would be the spark that would change the world of literature forever.

Joanne Rowling – better known as J.K. Rowling – was overcome with excitement as she saw a vision of a young, scrawny boy who the world would come to fall in love with.

“I saw Harry! I could see him very clearly – this scrawny little boy. And it was the most physical rush of excitement. It was the same feeling that you get when you meet someone new and feel as if you have found the person you are going to spend the rest of your life with.”

In 1949, 19 year-old Warren Buffet picked up a book that he claimed changed his life. Security Analysis, written by Benjamin Graham, helped shape Warren Buffet’s investing philosophy from the start.

The book was so important, in fact, that Buffet decided that he would not make another investment until he fully understood every detail of the book. So he decided to read it again…and again. He read that book 12 times before he allowed himself to get back into the investing game (he had been buying stocks since the age of 11).

There you sit. You have the goal in front of you, but you are not quite sure how you need to proceed. You have visualized what this project will look like when it is finished and you cannot wait to see it completed.

But for whatever reason it just does not feel like the right time to get started right now. You feel a little “off”. You do not know exactly where to start and there is not enough time on your schedule to get everything you would want to get done.

We can never seem to find the time to accomplish everything we want to on our to-do lists. Whether those things are work-related, family-related or goal-related, we just don’t seem to have enough time or energy to get them done.

“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” – Mark Twain

I don't know about you, but I doubt Mark Twain is actually advocating that we eat live frogs. So what was the “frog” he was talking about?

A “Frog” is that thing that ugly, disgusting, thing on your to-do list that you want to put off until later more than anything else. It’s something that needs to get done, but you have absolutely zero motivation to do it.

We all have frogs looming on our calendars, and here are 3 reasons you need to follow Mark Twain's advice and eat it first thing in the morning.

“What time is it?” David Blaine asked a bystander at his Frozen In Time expedition in Time Square.

“It’s 2pm” the man responded.

“Jeez, that means I still have 8 hours left in here!”

Blaine had been standing in a block of ice for a full 56 hours at that point. Sleep deprivation was causing him to hallucinate terrifying images and characters doing unspeakable things. The unseasonably warm weather in New York had caused part of the ice to melt, resulting in a cold dripping on his neck similar to Chinese water torture.